“I’m not going to be afraid, Audrey. There might be a hundred different demons, but The Book of the Dead is right, they are only keeping us from our path. I think these things exist for the same reason I was chosen to do this, because of fear. I was afraid to live, so I became Death. Their power is our fear of death. I’m not afraid. And I’m not taking the squirrel people.”

“They know the way. And besides, they’re fourteen inches tall, what do they have to live for?”

“Hey,” said a Beefeater guard whose head was the skull of a bobcat.

“Did he say something?” Charlie asked.

“One of my experimental voice boxes.”

“It’s a little squeaky.”

“Hey!”

“Sorry, uh, Beef,” Charlie said. The creatures seemed resolute. “Onward, then!”

Charlie ran down the hall so he wouldn’t have to say good-bye again. Ten yards behind him marched a small army of nightmare creatures, put together from the parts of a hundred different animals. It just so happened that at the time they were reaching the staircase, Mrs. Ling came downstairs to see what all the commotion had been about, and the entire army stopped in the stairway and looked up at her.

Mrs. Ling was, and had always been, a Buddhist, and so she was a firm believer in the concept of karma, and that those lessons you did not learn would continually be presented to you until you learned them, or your soul could never evolve to the next level. That afternoon, as the Forces of Light were about to engage the Forces of Darkness for dominion over the world, Mrs. Ling, staring into the blank eyes of the squirrel people, had her own epiphany, and she never again ate meat, of any kind. Her first act of atonement was an offering to those she felt she had wronged.

“You want snack?” she said.

But the squirrel people marched on.

The Emperor saw the van pull up near the creek and a man in bright yellow motorcycle leathers climb out. The man reached back into the van and grabbed what looked like a shoulder holster with a sledgehammer in it, and slipped into the harness. If the context hadn’t been so bizarre, the Emperor could have sworn it was his friend Charlie Asher, from the secondhand shop in North Beach, but Charlie? Here? With a gun? No.

Lazarus, who was not so dependent on his eyes for recognition, barked a greeting.

The man turned to them and waved. It was Charlie. He walked down to the creekbank across from them.

“Your Majesty,” Charlie said.

“You seem upset, Charlie. Is something wrong?”

“No, no, I’m okay, I just had to take directions from a mute beaver in a fez to get here, it’s unsettling.”

“Well, I can see how it would be,” said the Emperor. “Nice ensemble, though, the leathers and the pistol. Not your usual sartorial splendor.”

“Well, no. I’m on a bit of a mission. Going to go into that culvert, find my way into the Underworld, and do battle with the Forces of Darkness.”

“Good for you. Good for you. Forces of Darkness seem to be on the rise in my city lately.”

“You noticed, then?”

The Emperor hung his head. “Yes, I’m afraid we’ve lost one of our troops to the fiends.”

“Bummer?”

“He went into a storm sewer days ago, and hasn’t come out.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Would you look for him, Charlie? Please. Bring him out.”

“Your Majesty, I’m not sure that I’m coming back myself, but I promise, if I find him, I’ll try to bring him out. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to open this van and I don’t want you to be alarmed by what you see, but I want to get into the pipe while there’s still some light from the grates. What you see coming out of the van—they’re friends.”

“Carry on,” said the Emperor.

Charlie slid the door open and the squirrel people hopped, scampered, and scooted down the bank of the creek toward the culvert. Charlie reached into the van, took out his sword-cane and flashlight, and butt-bumped the door shut. Lazarus whimpered and looked at the Emperor as if someone who was able to talk should say something.

“Good luck, then, valiant Charlie,” said the Emperor. “You go forth with all of us in your heart, and you in ours.”

“You’ll watch the van?”

“Until the Golden Gate crumbles to dust, my friend,” said the Emperor.

And so Charlie Asher, in the service of life and light and all sentient beings, and in hope of rescuing the soul of the love of his life, led an army of fourteen-inch-tall bundles of animal bits, armed with everything from knitting needles to a spork, into the storm sewers of San Francisco.

They slogged on for hours—sometimes the pipes became narrow enough that Charlie had to crawl on his hands and knees, other times they opened into wide junctions like concrete rooms. He helped the squirrel people climb to higher pipes. He’d found a lightweight construction helmet fitted with an LED headlamp, which came in handy in narrow passages where he couldn’t aim the flashlight. He was also bumping his head about ten times an hour, and although the helmet protected him from injury, he’d developed a throbbing headache. His leathers—not really leathers, but more heavy nylon with Lexan pads at the knees, shoulders, elbows, shins, and forearms—were protecting him from bumps and abrasions on the pipes, but they were soaked and rubbing him raw at the backs of his knees. At an open junction with a grate at the top he climbed the ladder and tried to get a look at the neighborhood to perhaps get a sense of where they were, but it had gotten dark out since they started and the grate was under a parked car.

What irony, that he would finally summon his courage and charge into the breach, only to end up lost and stuck in the breach. A human misfire.

“Where the hell are we?” he said.

“No idea,” said the bobcat guy, the one who could talk.

The little Beefeater was disturbing to watch when he spoke, since he really didn’t have a face, only a skull, and he spoke without ever making the P sound. Also, instead of a halberd, which Charlie thought should have come with the costume for authenticity, the bobcat had armed himself with a spork.

“Can you ask the others if they know where we are?”

“Okay.” He turned to the damp gallery of squirrel people. “Hey, anybody know where we are?”

They all shook their heads, looking from one to another, shrugging. Nope.

“No,” said the bobcat.

“Well, I could have done that,” Charlie said.

“Why don’t you? It’s your _arty,” he said. Charlie realized he meant “party.”

“Why no Ps?” Charlie asked.

“No li_s.”

“Right, lips. Sorry. What are you going to do with that spork?”

“Well, when we find some bad guys, I’m going to s_ork the fuck out of them.”

“Excellent. You’re my lieutenant.”

“Because of the s_ork?”

“No, because you can talk. What’s your name?”

“Bob.”

“No really.”

“Really. It’s Bob.”

“So I suppose your last name is Cat.”

“Wilson.”

“Just checking. Sorry.”

“’S okay.”

“Do you remember who you were in your last life?”

“I remember a little. I think I was an accountant.”

“So, no military experience?”

“You need some bodies counted, I’m your man, er, thing.”

“Swell. Does anyone here remember if they used to be a soldier, or a ninja or anything? Extra credit for ninjas or a Viking or something. Weren’t any of you like Attila the Hun or Captain Horatio Hornblower in a former life or something?”

A ferret in a sequined minidress and go-go boots came forward, paw raised.

“You were a naval commander?”

The ferret appeared to whisper into Bob’s hat (since Bob no longer had ears).

“She says no, she misunderstood, she thought you meant horn blower.”

“She was a prostitute?”